Fairy Opera Chapter 15: Dark

 

Dark

“Fireworks.” I looked at Orion.

“Fireworks?” Orion tilted his head. “Why would you want to set off fireworks?”

“If you want to distract someone, pull off a fireworks show! On the opposite end of where we’re entering. Preferably at night.” I put my fist on the table. “If we distract all the guards on the walls for ten minutes, it would let us slip into the passageway.”

“Right.” Jastle nodded. “I don’t know if anyone in the Inquisition or Church of the God Emperor knows about the passageway, but we can’t be too careful.”

I looked around the room. “Is everyone agreed?”

“Agreed.” Orion clapped his hands. “That’s great. Except for one thing. Does anyone know how to create fireworks?”

I grinned. “I can create some spells that will do the job.”

Orion laughed. “You’re kidding.” He paused. “You’re kidding, right? No one would use magic for something like that, right?”

Jastle looked at Orion. “I think he’s being serious, boss.”

I nodded. “I’m going to create a number of fireworks spells. It should just be a modification of a fireball spell with a fuse set on it and some color and shape modifying libraries.”

Jastle clapped his hands. “You’re doing great, Rock. You’ve become a much better magician than you were just a few weeks ago.”

I smiled. “Yes. And we’re going to save my sister no matter what.”

Orion and Jastle looked at each other and nodded.

Orion clapped his hands. “We’ve got a few weeks to prepare as we head to Grand Castle. We’ve got enough supplies to take us there, and luck holding, we won’t have to stop along the way.”

“How are we going to dock our ship? Will there be a secret pirate cove just like Amberpol?”

“No. The entire island of Grand Castle is surrounded by a thick wall. The place is a fortress.” Jastle turned to Orion. “Rock raises a good question. How are we going to get onto the island?”

“We can’t cast an invisibility spell over the whole ship. If it were a small dinghy, then it might work.”

“So we’ll make it a small dinghy.” I nodded. “We’ll park the ship out of eyesight of the island, at least far enough to where they won’t be able to identify it. Then we’ll bring a dinghy to the shore under an invisibility spell. It worked once, it will work again.”

Orion clapped his hands together. “Then we have a plan. Meeting is adjourned, I’m hungry.”

Ruby sat on my shoulder, kicking her feet back and forth. “Rock, you’ve really grown in the past couple of weeks. Before you started this adventure, when I met you, I wouldn’t have expected you to be this proactive.”

“My sister is in danger.” I walked out of the captain’s quarters. “I’ll do anything I can to save her.”

“A man with a mission.”

We went down to the mess hall and ate dinner.

The days on board the Grand Mahogany stretched out endlessly, day after day, with classes from Jastle and Orion. Orion pushed me to the physical limit with each sparring encounter. I grew accustomed to wielding a sword. Orion was a top tier swordmaster, and he was very good at teaching. I worked on the fireworks spells with Jastle in the control room. We tested them out every night to get their color and shape right. Since we were putting on a show for the guards at Grand Castle, I wanted to impress them.

The days turned to weeks. On the third day of the second week, we spotted a ship in the distance. Because we were flying under the law, we did our best to slip by and hoped that the ship didn’t hail us.

But it did. A flag rose from its mast signaling that it wanted to talk. We steered the Grand Mahogany towards the other ship. In about an hour we were right alongside it. But instead of seeing a large number of crew on board, all we saw was a single man. He took out a talking cone and called across to us.

“Are you friendly?”

Orion called back through his own cone. “We are!”

“You’re not pirates?”

“We are not! What is your situation? Where is your crew and your captain?”

“It’s a long story. Do you care to listen?”

“Come aboard. We’ll listen.”

The man got onto a small dinghy and floated across the gap to our side. He climbed out of the ship and stepped on board.

“What happened, man? Where is the rest of your crew?” Orion confronted the sailor.

The sailor shuddered. “We were carrying a secret cargo for the Empire. Bound for Crane Island.”

“You’re not military, are you?”

“No, we’re a contracted merchant marine.” The man coughed. “Whatever was inside that hold broke free one night and stole away the rest of the crew. I was in the crow’s nest and hunkered down. I managed to lock the ones that didn’t escape in the lower hold.”

“So you’re saying that there are monsters on that there ship.” Orion frowned.

“Yes. Please, take me with you. I don’t want anything to do with that ship.”

“What is your name, sailor?”

“Alex.” Alex shivered. “I’m the last survivor of the Red Apple.”

“All right.” Orion looked at the ship. “That ship creeps me out. Let’s get away from it as fast as possible.” He yelled to the pilot. “Turn us around! We’re leaving this ship behind!’

The Grand Mahogany started to shift. We pulled away from the Red Apple.

The Red Apple, however, seemed to have other ideas. A fiery ball of black flame appeared on the hull, enveloping the entire ship. The ball expanded, swallowing the sky between us, and then coming over the Grand Mahogany. The sky turned pitch black. We were sucked into the vortex, our sails fluttering, the deck churning.

Alex screamed in terror as we went through the wormhole. “Help! Ah!”

I gripped the railing as our ship bucked and heaved. Then everything was still. The Grand Mahogany floated in a sea of blackness. A single red dot appeared on the horizon. It illuminated the area around it with a soft glow.

Orion ordered the ship towards the glow. We reached a small dock, made of wood and leading onto solid ground. The Grand Mahogany clacked against the wood and stopped.

Orion turned to me and Tae. “We’re going ashore. You’re coming with us.”

I nodded. “I’ll go where you go.”

Orion, myself, Tae, and several other sailors stepped off the ship and onto the docks. The red glow coming from the top of the mountain in the center of the island illuminated enough to see where we were going. We climbed a mountain trail. There was no sound, no wind, no grass moving. Only our footsteps sounded as we walked.

We reached the shrine. It was a small building with a statue built onto it. Before thinking about how dangerous it was, I stepped towards the shrine and touched it.

I was shown a vision. The entirety of my home burned. My family and friends were enslaved. Everything I had ever known was being destroyed. Then the vision changed. It showed a god-like being coming from the sky and liberating everyone. Then another god being rose from the darkness and challenged the first being. Their battle left the entire world shattered. I was shown this prophecy as a collage of information through pictures, instant knowledge, and a non-speaking intelligence that tailored everything to me.

Then the being spoke. “Rock. You must make a choice in the future. That choice will change the world as you know it.”

“Who are you?”

“That does not matter.” The voice faded away. “Remember who you are. Who you are meant to be.” Then the voice disappeared.

I was sucked back to reality. Orion pulled me back from the altar.

“Got you, boy.” Orion dragged me away from the glowing light.

I coughed. “Orion. I saw something. I saw something amazing.”

Orion shook his head. “Now’s not the time, Rock.” He pointed and I followed his gaze.

A number of monsters made stone, with red cracks flowing across their carapaces, were rising from the dark ground. Their mouths burned with fire, and their teeth glowed with an orange tint. Their eyes looked at us with burning intent.

The monsters lumbered towards us. Our party took up a defensive stance.

“Our mission is to return to the Grand Mahogany.” Orion pulled out a scroll. “Null—” The scroll fizzled. “Damn. They must have some sort of magical protection aura.”

I shuddered. “I’m going to have to design a scroll to get past that.” The monsters came closer. Their footsteps caused the ground to rumble.

Orion burst into a run. “Run! Get under them! Before they stomp us!”

The entire party sprinted towards the monsters. We slipped underneath their carapaces, without suffering any casualties. We then ran helter-skelter down the path we had climbed, the monsters turning to chase us.

We reached the ship, grabbing onto the rigging and climbing for our lives. The ship moved away from the dock. Several of its cannons opened fire on the monsters. One of them caught a cannonball to the face and reared back in pain. The other three monsters stopped at the end of the dock and pawed at the ground. We pulled away from them, and they didn’t follow out into the open blackness.

We sailed onwards into the blackness. The experience at the shrine had befuddled me. I couldn’t really process what I had seen, or what it meant. Those two god-like beings. I knew one of them was surely the God Emperor. But who would have enough power to rival him? And my entire home town. While I didn’t have any family still there, there was the gang that Tae and I were a part of in our youth. Adam, Cure, Barley. They were people that I had spent my entire childhood with. If they were to suffer because of something I did, then it would be the worst form of insult.

The Grand Mahogany continued to sail through the black dark. There were no lights, so we lit lanterns on the deck. There was no horizon. No skyfloor. Nothing to orient ourselves with. The red glow from the shrine faded away into the blackness behind.

A slithering sound came from somewhere to the starboard side. I thought I caught a glance of scales, shining in the dim light of the lantern.

Orion pulled out a scroll. “Null Bravos. Light the way!” A fireball of bright light rose from his palm and illuminated the space where I had caught sight of the scales.

A gigantic serpent was revealed to be flying beside our ship. The serpent slithered onto the ship, wrapping it in its body. The serpent moved its head right up to me and then it spoke. Its whiskers trembled as its nose flared in and out.

“Hello.” It spoke in Scode. “I see you have come across the night realm.”

Tae turned to me, clearly afraid. “What’s he saying?”

“He’s actually just asking us how we’re doing.” I was a bit bewildered.

The serpent moved its head to my side. The head, including the eyes, was about the size of two people. The serpent must have been several hundred meters long. “It’s not often that ships of this size enter into the darkness of Hades.”

“Can you tell us how to escape?”

“To escape, you must prove to Baphomet that you deserve to be released.” The serpent hissed. “I see you have a powerful magic core. If you can defeat the plague that covers this realm, then perhaps the lord will be kindly to you and allow you passage out.”

“Okay. Tell us what we need to do.”

The serpent tasted the air with its tongue. “Very well then.”

 

16

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